


Shedding Skin

by Steals_Thyme (Liodain)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Dark, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Roche, Rape Recovery, Trigger Material
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-08
Updated: 2010-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/pseuds/Steals_Thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fallout from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/59482">Boiler Room</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Shedding Skin

Dan wakes up at home, alone, roped in his sheets, overheated and clammy and slumped halfway out of bed. He's still in uniform, sort of; the gray spandex is wrinkled and twisted uncomfortably around his thighs and the crescent-moon of his belt digs into his stomach when he sits up.

There's a vile taste in the back of his throat and his head is pounding, and for a long, blissfully oblivious moment, he wonders if he got drunk last night.

A long shiver works its way up his spine, making his skin shudder and crawl. No. He didn't get drunk.

He rubs his hands together then stands cautiously, pads into the bathroom and looks around. The shower curtain hangs half-closed; he pulls it back in a sharp motion and the flash of movement caught in the mirror makes his pulse rocket. He swallows, breathes out through his nose. Steps out into the hallway, then does a quick circuit of the house. He's almost reassured to find that he had the presence of mind to lock up last night.

He spends only a short time in the shower, partly because the hot water makes him feel lightheaded and his skin prickle, but mostly because he doesn't like the way he can't hear anything over the patter of the spray.

He's read about people, about when things happen to them and they spend hours bathing and scrubbing. He wonders if there's something wrong with him, that he doesn't feel like doing the same.

_Stop that right fucking now,_ he tells himself. _You aren't the victim here._

He can't even being to unpack all the things that are wrong with that thought.

His shoulders scream murderously when he reaches up to soap his hair, and he can't throttle the noise that tries to escape him, dredged up from somewhere uncomfortable. It sounds alien when it echoes back at him.

He towels off and dresses himself tidily, decides to wear a tie and vest even though he isn't going anywhere.

In his kitchen, he stares into his coffee. The occasional detail comes into sharp focus if he thinks too much, tactile snapshots that are ugly in their clarity. He tries not to think, but it happens anyway.

(The headlights from a passing bus halo Rorschach, rusting his damp hair and throwing the bruised contours of his face first into relief, and then into flat shadow.)

His feet are cold on the kitchen floor; he forgot socks.

The coffee has cooled to an unpleasant temperature, but he doesn't like the thought of wasting it by pouring it away, so he leaves the mug on the table. Maybe he'll heat it up again later. Rorschach had left a mug on the table after patrol the day before yesterday, just like that. He had twisted it with his fingertips as he talked, until the angle of the handle aligned with the stripes on his tablecloth.

(They lean heavily against each other to walk, staggering like a pair of drunks. He remembers counting his breaths, each inhale and exhale.)

He picks it back up and puts it in the sink, still full. His shirt cuff rides up and there are bruises around his wrist in a purple-black ring. He stands very, very still for a moment, then pushes his glasses onto his forehead and presses against his eyelids until a kaleidoscope of patterns burst in front of him.

(Car lights streak and trail across his vision like a time-lapse photograph, lines shuddering and breaking with each unsteady, jarring footfall.)

Later, he sits in his living room, in the armchair, and tries to read the newspaper for a couple of hours. Sometimes he gets the impulse to stand, as though he was going to do something. Sometimes he _does_ stand, sets his paper aside and straightens his shirt but by then he's forgotten what he stood up to do, so he sits again and tries to read again until it gets too dark.

His coffee is cold again, and Rorschach, where is—

-

 

He lies sleepless until two hours before dawn, and then wakes up mid-morning soaked with sweat. Every muscle in his body is rigid and his heart pounds so hard and fast that he can't hear anything else.

-

 

He puts another cup in the sink. They're piling up and he should probably wash them, but he has clean ones yet so it doesn't seem worth it. He hates the sound of ceramic against steel; the scratchy, dragging noise makes something in his chest swell, high and tight. His mouth tastes like iron when he coughs, like adrenaline.

(The texture of the brickwork under his fingers is rough when he bends over to retch at the smell of blood and semen that has suddenly caught him like a spike in his throat.)

"Oh god," Dan says thickly. He leans against the worktop then crouches on the floor, shoulder pressing against a cupboard door. "Oh god, oh fuck."

He can't remember how they got out of there. How did they, and where is—

He's breathing too quickly, shallow and uneven and there's cold sweat coursing down his back and he's shivering (distantly, he realizes that he might be in shock, but he can't remember what to do about it). He claps his hands to his mouth when his breath hitches, because he can't stand to hear himself sob.

He has seen worse, much much worse; he's seen terrible, awful things and he really has no right to feel this way, not over this.

He breathes and shivers and doesn't cry; stares at the floor and counts the repeating pattern on the linoleum until the heating kicks in for the afternoon. The pipes clank noisily and then there's nothing he can do to help himself.

-

 

His feet and calves tingle numbly as he uncurls from the armchair and slouches through to the kitchen. He doesn't bother flicking on the light. It seems pointless since he can barely see a damn thing anyway; his eyes are sore and blurry and swollen half-shut.

It's evening again and his body is telling him he's hungry, belly caving in on itself with ominous rumbles. He doesn't feel like eating anything, but pours out some cereal anyway and mechanically spoons it into his mouth, dry.

(His stomach convulses painfully when Rorschach wraps an arm around him and hauls him upright from where he has sagged against the wall. Rorschach is the one being strong, he is the one who has gotten them out and free and he shouldn't have had to, not after what he has just endured, not with the evidence of it still crusted on his face.

He can't let anyone see this, they've got to get back, get home and safe and never ever ever let anyone see Rorschach like this, never let them _see him_—)

Rorschach is a dense shadow at the edge of his kitchen.

Dan drops his spoon into the bowl, opens his mouth, closes it again. His throat makes a clicking noise as he swallows.

"Good evening, Daniel," Rorschach says. Perfunctory, gruff, and disturbingly normal.

Dan has seen Rorschach when he's upset – the time they'd busted a human trafficking-slash-prostitution ring and found a dozen young girls packed into a basement, all dark hair and dark eyes and four words of English between them (no, please, water, help), he'd paced silently, constantly cracked his knuckles and was even more uncommunicative than usual – but he isn't anything like that now.

Dan wonders if he spent yesterday being a mess and has already managed to crush the trauma though sheer pigheaded determination – wonders whether it's already one more of the myriad things that they never talk about, locked down and hidden away.

It's not healthy, but it seems like an appealing way to deal right now. Maybe he'll share how he does it, if Dan can ask him without actually _asking_.

_Oh, hey, about that pathological case of repression you got going on..._

_Practice_, he'll say.

Dan thinks maybe they aren't very good for each other, sometimes.

Rorschach seems to be waiting for something. His head is tilted a couple of degrees to the left and ink swims through a series of expectant patterns. For a horrible moment, Dan thinks he must have gone back there to retrieve his mask; there's no way he won't have left a trail of carnage in his wake and how can he be so _calm_— but then he notices it's kind of shinier, cleaner-looking. Dan's often wondered where he got the damn thing. Now he's wondering where he got _two_.

Rorschach clears his throat.

"What," Dan says, then realizes he's been staring unfocused into the middle-distance for some time. "Oh. Evening." He offers a watery smile.

"Should get ready." Rorschach pushes the door to the Nest open. "Almost time for patrol."

Patrol. It's not the last thing Dan wants to do right now, but it's close. The actual last thing he wants to do, however, the absolute last, is to tell Rorschach no. There's no way he can leave him out there alone.

He looks at the rectangle of basement darkness, and tries not to think about how it's going to smell: damp and cold and tinged with years of bloodstains that never completely scrub away.

-

 

Dan has never been more glad that he went to the effort of making a spare uniform. His other costume is still on his bedroom floor in a grimy gray puddle, stinking with fear-sweat. He probably smells a little of it himself right now; the dark pooled in corners of his workshop and the flaking metal railings are making him jittery. Mercifully, it doesn't smell as dank as he thought it would; it's mostly just engine oil and stale coffee.

Rorschach stands a little distance away like he always does, turned slightly to one side to offer Dan some pretense of privacy. He fidgets impatiently when it takes Dan longer than usual to suit up.

Dan's goggles are an old pair and the prescription of his lenses has changed since; he knows they'll turn his dull throb of a headache into a full-on migraine, but he doesn't have much choice. He pulls them on and from behind the reflective glass, he watches Rorschach pretend not to watch him fastening his belt.

"Are you done?" Rorschach asks.

Dan nods, and opens his big mouth. "You shouldn't," he says. And then, "Aren't you..." He stops to consider what he's trying to say, then thinks better of it entirely. He climbs up into Archie.

Rorschach tugs the collar of his trench up, and says nothing.

-

 

They're a few hundred feet over New York, coasting in a holding pattern as they scan the emergency service radio bands for likely activity. They've exchanged barely a handful of words this evening, and only half of those were actually real words and not select noises from Rorschach's vocabulary of grunts and growls.

He's become noticeably more withdrawn since he turned up, and Dan wonders if it was the basement, or if it's being around Nite Owl, or being around _him_ that's doing it.

Rorschach pushes himself up from the co-pilot's chair in a stiff movement, unfolding like a rusted penknife. "Tired of this," he mutters. "Bring us down."

Dan takes a deep breath. Rorschach has nowhere to escape to, up here.

"No," he says, pulling back his cowl. "No. I don't want to."

Rorschach seems unperturbed at his defiance. "Going to sit up here all night, cowering?"

"Oh, fuck you," Dan snaps, surprised at the sudden crest of anger even as it propels him to his feet and into his partner's space. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but you can't just—"

"Can't what," Rorschach asks, flat as newsprint. Ink flows into dangerous shapes; sharks and claws.

"Can't just pretend that _nothing happened_. You can't do this kind of thing alone, it's—"

"Yes," Rorschach says, with absolute conviction. "I can. Not up for discussion. Put your mask on and take us down, Nite Owl."

Dan can see how the night is going to play out already: a whirlwind of ultraviolence, pent-up misery redirected and inflicted indiscriminately. He doesn't have the fortitude for it. "And what are you gonna do? Beat some poor schmuck's face into hamburger to make yourself feel better?"

"Considering it," Rorschach says.

"Well, that's just great, Rorschach. Just great. Real progressive of you." Dan can feel himself trembling, hands fisted at his sides. His headache ratchets up a couple of notches. "God, how can you—"

"Are you angry, Daniel?" It might sound hesitant from anyone else, timid. From that featureless monotone, it's a challenge. When Dan doesn't rise to it immediately, Rorschach tries to loom over him, staring him down. Dan can see the grimace of his mouth working beneath the latex as he over-enunciates. "Are you. Angry."

"Yeah," Dan says, not because it's what Rorschach wants to hear, but because it's the truth. He's furious, and it's kindling into something white-hot; it's directionless and impotent and it makes his voice shake. "Yeah. I'm fucking angry."

"Then stop flailing like an amateur. Take it, use it." Rorschach tugs at Dan's goggles, pulls his face down to barely an inch from the swirling latex. "Bring us down."

-

 

Things don't get really bad until about an hour later, when they run across a thick-necked heavy laying into a guy who doesn't look like he's long out of his teens. Rorschach is on him before Dan can move, driving him down onto the asphalt with a boot to the side of his head, then into his stomach. By the time Dan snaps into action, Rorschach has straddled the thug's chest and is indulging in some blood-drenched stress-release.

"You're going to kill him," Dan says, grabbing at Rorschach's shoulder. "For god's sake—"

He reels back a step, ears ringing and a burst of pain blossoming across his face. His hands go to his mouth; his lip is split and bleeding.

Rorschach takes a step back, too, and lowers his fists. He breathes out a string of consonants, then turns. "Help me cuff them," he says.

The kid is wearing gang colors, the same ones as his assailant. They fasten them to a fire escape, Dan takes care of the big guy while Rorschach cuffs the kid, muttering under his breath about how willingly they eat their own. Dan ignores him, reaches for Archie's remote. He's had enough, and Rorschach definitely has, whether he thinks so or not.

The kid comes round as Dan guides the ship to them. He gazes up blearily as Archie eclipses the sliver of sky between tenement buildings, and lurches to his feet when he lets his head drop and catches sight of the other guy.

"No," he says, voice thick and nasal through smashed cartilage. "No. No, you can't leave me here with him, they'll lock me _in_ with him, don't fucking—"

He jerks himself towards Dan and the cuffs screech along the metal and rust flakes off and he gasps at the stress in his shoulders and there's nothing he can do, he can't get any further and he can't _help_—

"Oh god," Dan breathes, clutching at his goggles, his cowl. The air is suddenly too heavy, feels pressurized in his ears, behind his eyes.

A hand against his back. "Not here," Rorschach rasps, but he doesn't sound right, he sounds fractured and unsteady under the growling bravado. They stumble around a corner, out of view. For a moment Dan thinks Rorschach is propping him against the wall, but they he realizes Rorschach is propping _himself_ up, his fists wrapped in Dan's cape, and the wall is just a lucky coincidence.

"We have to get back," Dan says. "Have to...Archie, get to Archie and back."

Rorschach scrabbles at his mask one-handed, yanks it up above his nose to drag in a raw breath. It sounds like it hurts. "Ahn," he says, open-mouthed. He rubs a hand over his cheeks and jaw, over and over.

He's mouthing words, and Dan can't make them out because it feels like his skull is fracturing, but he's definitely reciting under his breath and shaking, badly. Rorschach never shakes like this, not when he's dead on his feet; not when he's about to sink the first stitch of the evening; not even when he's flushed full of adrenaline and ready to fight.

He clasps Rorschach's elbow with one hand, calls Archie with the other. Rorschach stands and sways and whispers disjointedly about wrath and tears until Dan hustles him aboard.

He pulls himself free of Dan's grip, drops his fedora on the floor and drags off the mask. His cheeks and forehead are clammy with sweat, his hair is flattened and dark and renders his already pale face into something ghastly. He glances over at Dan, and there's something closed-off in his expression, well beyond the inscrutability of his mask.

Dan flips on the autopilot and reaches out to him, the instinctive need to comfort the only thing informing his actions. He knows how he's likely to respond, has to try anyway.

Rorschach recoils. "Don't," he says, voice hoarse. He squeezes his mask convulsively; the latex oozes between his fingers. "Please."

"I can't pretend," Dan says. "It's not gonna just go away. God help me, Rorschach, I can't just ignore this."

"Can, if you would _stop_—" He claws a hand through his hair, turns so Dan can't see his face. "Stop looking at me like—"

Dan pushes his goggles up to rub at his eyes. He doesn't know how to do this. They are in so far over their heads and it feels like his floundering is pulling them into the depths, instead of keeping them above water.

The autopilot chimes, and a light flashes on the console. He slumps into the pilot's seat and takes them home.

-

 

Rorschach refuses to come into the brownstone, and nothing Dan says can stop him from bolting through the tunnel. Dan stands and listens to his receding footfalls until they echo into nothing.

-

 

He's back a few hours later. Dan doesn't hear him over the television – canned laughter left on to lull him to sleep, and to make the house seem less empty when that fails – but happens across his trench, crumpled on the kitchen floor. Dan collects a trail of clothing that leads upstairs: a glove on the hallway bureau, another on the third stair up. His hat is perched on the landing newel post and his scarf hangs from the doorknob of the guest bathroom. The door is ajar; he can't hear running water.

He leans against the door frame. "You gonna shower, buddy?" he says. After a moment, the door creaks open.

There's a spatter of dry blood on the front of Rorschach's shirt, and Dan realizes that he's still wearing the same clothes. The inner seams of his pinstripes are stained dark.

"There's always men," Rorschach says, as Dan guides him into the guest bedroom. He seems dazed and mask is half-up; he's tugging at the edge of it, as if he can't decide who to be.

"No men here," Dan says, confused and a little unnerved; he wonders if this was the last straw, that the culmination of everything they do has caught up and this last thing has finally cracked him. He coaxes him toward the bed. "No men. Well, just me. Come lie down, you need to rest."

Rorschach sits obediently, which only serves to worry Dan further. He wants to get the filthy clothes off him to run them through the washer (or maybe to burn them and explain later), but he doubts asking Rorschach to take off his pants would end well right now.

Rorschach toes off his shoes and lies right on the edge of the bed, facing the door. Dan goes to fetch a glass of water, quietly places it on the nightstand when it looks like Rorschach has already fallen asleep, and makes to leave.

He's already decided he's going to clean up the parts of Rorschach's uniform that were discarded. Mostly it's something to occupy himself with, and it's not like doing laundry in the early hours is an unusual occurrence for him.

"Daniel," Rorschach says, slightly muffled where the side of his face presses into the comforter.

Dan halts, takes a step backwards into the room. "I'm here," he says.

"You're a good man." A ragged inhale. "Didn't deserve that either."

There's a knot in his throat, and it's hard to swallow around. Dan takes his glasses off, squeezes his eyes shut and polishes the lenses on the hem of his shirt while he concentrates really hard on not having an emotional breakdown.

"Stay here," Rorschach says, and even half-dressed and wrung out, he can make it sound like an imperative.

-

 

Dan stretches out next to him, fingers splayed over his chest, resting between the buttons of his shirt and caged inside a pale hand. Rorschach is pretending the closeness doesn't faze him, but his breathing gives him away and his pulse is fluttering like a bird seeking flight. Dan's lost count of the times he's gone to move, and of the times Rorschach has tightened his grip, making him still again.

He drifts. Rorschach is as hot as a furnace against his chest, pulling him out of sleep and lulling him under in turn. It could be hours later, days, when Rorschach says, "Didn't mean to hit you," or it could only be minutes.

"I know." His voice seems far too loud, even though he's whispering. Everything is so quiet.

"There for her. But, sometimes not just her."

It's disconnected from the faltering apology, but Dan can tell it's important by the way he forms the words. He can tell that they're difficult, too; only freed on the back of something comparatively innocuous.

He falls silent, and Dan is left to decipher the words like they're some ancient riddle. He shifts, moves a hand so it rests between Rorschach's shoulder blades. He can feel his skin twitch and shudder through the stiff shirtcloth.

-

 

He's gone in the morning, but back by the evening. He slides between the sheets with feline caution and lies ramrod-straight, until Dan rests a hand on his chest. He curls himself around it like an autumn leaf, closes his eyes. He smells cold, like rain and ozone.

It could easily be a trick of Dan's subconscious; the surrealism of it. He's in bed with his partner, huddled under the bedclothes and hiding from the world at large. He's dreamt of this.

"Don't think she knew. Was...scared. To tell her," Rorschach says, and Dan wishes for it to be part of the same nightmare as everything else. He'd sacrifice this in a heartbeat if it meant they could both wake up and shed the damage like old skin. "Maybe would have encouraged it, charged for it. Made me in her image, like mother like son, hehn."

It hasn't been hard to figure out what he's talking about, and the increasing honesty of his statements are difficult to deal with. There were men. Dan lies there in quiet horror, and Rorschach carries on, distant.

"Learned to be somewhere else." There's a slight motion of his body, a shrug or maybe shake of his head. "Can't do that anymore. Lost it."

Something else rides on his lips. It's almost audible, the tiny sound of tongue against teeth, the faint exhale that was meant to carry words. He subsides into silence.

"I'm sorry," Dan says. It's forever an inadequate expression.

"Not your fault," Rorschach mutters. "What are you apologizing for."

"I dunno, _something_," Dan says. "I just. I want to undo it, all of it. Everything. I want to...I keep thinking, if I could just..." He makes a futile gesture in the space between them, lets his hand drop heavily to the mattress.

"Happened," Rorschach says. He shifts closer, until Dan can feel his breath against his shoulder. "Can't change it. Beat someone else up over it, instead of yourself."

Dan says nothing for a while. Sometimes, Rorschach is a vicious, intimidating asshole of a bully. And now, sometimes he's a scared little boy hiding under a mask, lashing out because he's finally strong enough and unafraid enough to avenge himself. It could amount to the same thing.

He fumbles around under the covers, finds Rorschach's forearm and leaves careful, light contact as he seeks his wrist. He wraps his hand around the knot of bone and sinew, feels the man's pulse hasten under his fingers. "Promise me you won't kill anyone."

Rorschach twists to press against Dan's side. "Don't make promises," he says. "But have every intention of letting him live." He makes a noise that is too rough for a sigh, to dark for a laugh. "Understand that prison is not easy ride for rapists."

"Good," Dan says, not sure what part of this he's glad of, whether he should be happy about any of it. He lets out a shuddery breath, and another, until Rorschach presses his lips to Dan's jaw and winds his fingers into his hair and breathes with him.

He's still there in the morning, sheets arrayed around him like the signs of a struggle.


End file.
